John Sladek Quotes

There's a lot of ignorance about how long it takes to write a novel. There's a lot of ignorance about how long a novel is in your head before you start to write it.

While writing a novel, I don't read anything new in fiction. I am too engrossed.

Actually, I enjoy the process of writing a big long novel.

If you're writing a novel, you're in a room for three or four years. There's not much coming in from the outside.

My first job is to write a book that I believe is compelling and deserves the long sustained attention that any novel requires, and to worry about the commerce only late in the game.

I'm not the most prolific writer in the world, and, sadly, writing a novel involves a lot of effort.

It depends on the book and what else is going on during my life, but it usually takes me about six months to write and revise the first draft.

Oh you know, I've been writing a novel.

Writing novels is sitting in a room by yourself for a year.

I'm hoping to get started on a new novel.

When I started working on 'Stay With Me,' I thought it would take two years to complete the novel.

I don't know how everyone writes a novel; that sounds exhausting.

I work very hard at each story, at every sentence.

Usually after finishing a novel, I have a head full of bad ideas for the next one.

I must write the book out in my head now, before I sit down.

Sometimes I write less than I'd like but do research. Other times, editor's notes or a copy-edited manuscript or page proofs for a forthcoming novel mean that I need to put my attentions elsewhere for a day or two, but I always come back to writing.

I came up with a story and I wrote it.

Novelists do not write as birds sing, by the push of nature. It is part of the job that there should be much routine and some daily stuff on the level of carpentry.

For me, the hardest thing in the world is how to start a book.

A novel usually takes me two years. A year to research and plan and dream. Then a year to write.

I think there is often a 'what if' proposition that gets me thinking about all my novels.

I was twenty-seven when I came up with the idea for my first novel.

Well, to be honest I think I'm a better short story writer than a novelist. Novels I find very hard, hours and hours, weeks and weeks, of conscious thought - whereas short stories slip out painlessly in a few days.

You can write a short story in two hours. Two hours a day, you have a novel in a year.

I started writing novels by not thinking about actually writing a whole novel - that felt altogether too daunting. I thought out a rough idea, then wrote chapter by chapter, and then by the time I'd hit 40,000 words, it was a challenge just to see if I could get to the end.